Student Exuberance

If there was any doubt in anyone's mind about whether our high school group is above average for exuberance, I suspect they have now been disabused of that misconception. Today the students chose songs for the group to sing at the awards assembly. Among the songs they chose was "I'm Like a Tree." Just as they have been doing all year when they sang that song, they stood on their chairs (the church benches, in this case) and faced the audience and waved their "branch" arms back and forth with abandon. I can not imagine having wanted to do that when I was in high school.

Later, I described for everyone some of the signs of excitement I've been noting at year's end. I had just finished saying that there's been lots of applause for no apparent reason, and I was interrupted with applause! At the end of my short speech, I asked the students to sing "Freedom is Coming" with the slight alteration they had used at dismissal time on Wednesday. So they sang "Summer is Coming," and the back row of students got up on the bench again to sing. And they clapped for themselves afterward again, just as they did when they sang at dismissal. (I think this is right, although some of the clapping sort of gets blurred in my memory.)

I forgot, unfortunately, to say anything specific about the typing class. The Lord knows there would have been plenty to say. I could have said that the entire class increased their adjusted words per minute (AWM) average by almost three AWM in the last week of school--for an average of almost 57 AWM. This was not the fastest class average I've encountered, but it was certainly respectable. If there had been a grade for vigorous social interactions, this class would have scored off the charts.

In the process of making comparisons with previous classes, I heard rumors of students in other years having gamed the system by repeating the same lessons over and over, and skipping some of the more difficult lessons. If I teach typing again next year, I'll have my antennae out for such maneuvers.

I'll also probably enforce some quiet time during typing class. Near the end of the year, this talkative class actually requested this "privilege." Not all the time, they assured me. Just for part of class, so they could really concentrate on increasing their speed.

I could also have said that, besides developing keyboard skills, the typing class did a variety of typing projects. We made tables and charts, documents using columns, posters, memos, business letters, formatted Bible memory passages and poems, formatted the various parts of a research paper, and made covers for church and school publications. We also produced projects using a spreadsheet program and a slide show program. At the end of the class, we looked at a database program, a math program, a drawing program, and the use of templates.

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Last night after the graduation service was over, I was in my vehicle getting ready to leave when I saw another act of end-of-year exuberance. On the sidewalk where they were both walking along, Marvin came up behind MJ and put his hands on MJ's shoulders and in one smooth motion he had vaulted over the top of his head, and landed on his feet on the sidewalk just ahead of MJ. Then he did it again, just for fun. I don't know what you call this action--Stand-up-Leapfrog?

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Wesley (our principal) and Jean Ann left immediately after the awards assembly to drive to Minnesota for the funeral of Wes' uncle by marriage--John C. Yoder. At least one van load of others from here traveled to the same funeral. John used to be a minister here, and he and his wife were both born here and they started their family here. My dad and he preached in the same Old Order Amish church district in the 1950s. Dad went to the funeral. My Uncle Fred took a van load of passengers.

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We've heard more distressing news about daughter-in-law Dorcas' mother's cancer. It is apparently quite advanced, and more malignancies have been discovered besides the ones in her lungs and on her spine. Radiation is being used to reduce the size of the spinal tumor, to head off paralysis otherwise. Mark Kuepfer is calling for his children to come home as soon as possible, in order to have some good family time together with their mother, Esther. So Rachel is coming from Thailand on Wednesday, and the family will stay in the US until after their twins are born. Ruth hurried home from her teaching job in Georgia; Dorcas leaves from here tomorrow, and, in several weeks, after Joe and Marilyn return from their semester in Mexico, Shane and they will drive to VA together. Then, according to present plans, all except Ruth will return to Kansas around the end of May.

Esther is my age. Please join me in praying for the Kuepfer family.

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One local farmer was told by his agronomist that if we don't get rain within a week, people probably won't need to bother getting their combines out at wheat harvest time. This is not a happy prospect. Shane said he checked inside a wheat head today and found the tiniest of wheat berries. There's still not a good rain prospect in the near future, but we keep on praying.